AC/DC

Wow. They really could've done w/o Anvil and The Answer (the former played these bad versions of other people's songs - not like covers, but like knockoffs - "Mothra" instead of "Godzilla" and "666" instead of "Number of the Beast" - they were awful, all nostalgia for Spinal Tap aside). But after that it was an amazing spectacle - just a huge, vulgar, silly, fun romp. If you could get through that show w/o smiling all the time, then you really have no soul - or more precisely, no sense of humor. And that's what I always appreciated about AC/DC - they seemed to know and have a good humor about this all being a show, an act, and to a large extent, a joke. They weren't going to try to be serious musicians, they weren't going to try to be the "Bad Boys," they were just going to play loud music with lyrics that'd make your parents cringe, because when you put four boys together, that's how they talk, each trying to outdo the other with the explicitness and grossness of what he's saying. And the words aren't even anything really bad, like killing cops or beating bitches, they're just sort of raucously juvenile - every one of their songs is about having sex, but it's all playful and it's not about hurting or abusing or degrading. Indeed, when a 30' giantess came out on the stage and straddled a full size locomotive - well, of course it was lewd, but it was mostly just plain hilariously ridiculous, and if anyone were in danger of being hurt, it was the tiny band members, who looked like sweaty little hamsters around her enormous ankles.

This was my first real arena rock spectacular, with huge production values, and it completely lived up to expectations.